Group items tagged

By Evan Weissman, Dan Cullinan, Oscar Cerna, Stephanie Safran and Phoebe Richman, with Amanda Grossman. National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) Teachers College Columbia University. February 2012. Link to full report at the bottom of the summary on this page. The colleges in this study are two of six in the NCPR Learning Communities Demonstration, in which random assignment evaluations are being used to determine the impacts of learning communities on student success. NCPR has presented finding from all six colleges. They show that when one-semester learning communities have impacts, they tend to be concentrated in the semester in which students are enrolled in the program. Another report, a final one will be released in 2012. That report synthesizes the findings across all colleges studied and includes an additional semester of student follow-up at each college.

By George Lorenzo, 2011. A renewed interest in community colleges is resulting in looking at driving factors for the future success. This report looks at the potential solutions proposed in papers that came out of The White House Summit on Community Colleges held on October 5, 2010. These include industry partnerships, providing a more well-rounded education with career training, better support services at community colleges,etc. Lorenzo mentions The Learn and Earn initiative, technology with online and hybrid courses, open education resources and other ways to engage students. He looks at college readiness and what Complete College America, a new nonprofit organization, advises as ways to address this shortcoming.

By Richard Perez-Pena, Education section, New York Times, July 20 2012. This article profiles the New Community College, CUNY's newest 2-year college, set to begin classes in September 2012. The school has been developed to test several leading theories of how to make community colleges better, including stricter requirements, no remedial classes per se (but all include a remedial component), experiential and collaborative work, and much greater student support. See tag ncc for related articles.

Our August launch meeting will be held on the New Community College campus; here is more about what makes the New Community College "new."

By Laurel Rosenhall in The Sacramento Bee, November 18 2010. A nonprofit association, the Community College League of California, calls for community colleges to educate 1 million more students by 2020, ensure that more students leave community college with a degree, and "do a better job educating Latino and African American students." Recommended changes include "evidence-based solutions," thinking differently and joining "Complete College America."

On Radio Times, WHYY Radio. Host Marty Moss-Coane talks withThomas Bailey of Columbia University's Teachers College and Joseph Merlino, president of the 21st Century Partnership for STEM. They discuss the question of whether colleges should offer remedial courses, why so many high school students need help and how high schools and colleges can work together to prepare students for the college work load.

By Thomas J. Snyder in The Hechinger Report, May 3 2011. Snyder, president of the nation's largest state-wide community college (Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana), argues that governors who cut funding to community colleges are being short-sighted, and argues for the importance of community colleges in the economic recovery.

By Alan Greenblatt on NPR, March 29 2010. Greenblatt reports that there was initially great promise for community colleges in the health care reconciliation bill that was passed at the end of March. However, "Congress ultimately took a pass on restructuring the mission of the nation's community colleges." The $12 billion American Graduation Initiative recognized the important role that community colleges could play in producing more college graduates, but the initiative was not included in the final law.

See last paragraph for quote from Gail Mellow.

By Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010. In this editorial, Carey (policy director of think tank Education Sector) argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education.

By Elizabeth M. Zachry, December 2008. Achieving the Dream model of instructional reform implemented for developmental education courses at three community colleges: Guilford Technical Community College in Greensboro, North Carolina; Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Virginia; and Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, Virginia.

Created by the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, 2008. According to the History page, "The Transition Mathematics Project (TMP) is designed to reverse this trend by helping students successfully progress from high school math to college-level math. With the participation of high school and college math educators, TMP has identified the math skills and knowledge high school graduates need to complete college-level work...."

By Kevin Carey, Commentary in The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 11, 2011. Community Colleges will now have an opportunity to vie for a top prize. "The Aspen Institute is awarding the first annual Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, with the winner and up to three runners-up sharing in the $1-million prize fund." Among the 10 finalists, Aspen Institute's evaluators conducted site visits and looked closely at employment outcomes, teaching practices and student learning. "The best community colleges, they found, were focused and intentional when it came to structuring the learning experience."

By Sara Lipka in the Students section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 11 2010. Reporting on the latest report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement, which states that "Increasing college completion is meaningless unless certificates and degrees represent real learning, which community colleges must work harder to ensure."

By Ryan Brown in the Community Colleges section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18 2011. The article reports on a recent CCRC study of 51,000 community college students in Washington State between 2004 and 2009. In 2010, CCRC released a similar study looking at online learning in the Virginia community college system. Reasons for this gap are surmised to be "technical difficulties, a lack of structure, and isolation."

by Jon Marcus on The Hechinger Report, December 26, 2011. Open University, a successful British online public university to be used as a model in the U.S. The goal is to help students who are intimidated by higher education adapt to and succeed in college. Next Generation Learning Challenges, a Gates funded initiative, will adapt two free Open University, at-your-own-pace online courses for use at about a dozen U.S. colleges and universities this academic year: one to help students be more comfortable with math so they do better on placement tests or move more quickly through remedial courses, and another to teach students skills to prepare them for college.

Stories of students with huge debt loads and a degree no one recognizes after attending a private, for profit, college. One school, Westwood College, has a class action suit against it.

The Community College Research Center (CCRC) is part of the Insitute on Education and the Economy, Teacher's College, Columbia University. From their site: "CCRC"s mission is to conduct research on major issues affecting community colleges in the United States and to contribute to the development of practice and policy that expands access to higher education and promotes success for all students."

By the SOURCE on Community College Issues, Trends & Strategies, May 2011. For this report, the SOURCE's editor-in-chief interviewed eleven community college leaders from across the country. Questions relate to: college readiness, remedial education, workforce development, educational technologies, student services, data analysis, funding/grants

Announcement of a Summary Report produced by Community College Research Center (CCRC) by Davis Jenkins, Shanna Smith Jaggars & Josipa Roksa, November 2009. The analysis looked at the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), studying a dataset of 24,140 first-time college students who enrolled in at least one VCCS course in summer or fall 2004. A PDF of the summary is available from this page, as is a link to the full-length technical version.

Published by the American Association of Community Colleges, October 2011. Authored by Christopher M. Mullin. You can read the Executive Summary on this page, or download the full text PDF. The report concludes that community college enrollments have gone up considerably since 2007, and that "educational attainment for all key populations is increasing at community colleges."

By Rob Jenkins in the On Hiring [blog], The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30 2012. A brief post in which Jenkins talks about how community colleges' requirement of college-level teaching experience scares off (or at least causes concern) among some recent PhD seekers, who were under the impression that community colleges did not have stringent teaching experience requirements.